Encore!

Taking real people and bringing them back together to recreate an event they bonded over more than 10 years later is incredibly entertaining and thought-provoking.

"Encore!" is a well-made, clever show that becomes more about how we change (and how much we don’t) as we go from high school to adulthood. Watching people slide back into insecurities they left behind or rekindle artistic sides that life forced them to repress makes for fascinating reality TV.

It’s an interesting premise that shows just how intense high school can be. ... While the series doesn’t give full back stories, it does let you know what happened to the students and how theater affected their lives.

Without the time to properly investigate the pitch-black issues it’s tapping into, nor the focus on how the thrill of pulling off the big show affects the performers’ lives, Encore! never fully taps into that power, even with all its kooky charms.

The series feels padded and the lack of Kristen Bell’s presence – she does introductions for all the episodes but only appears in a few – is a disappointment.

Stuffing a dozen new characters with complicated relationships to each other, an additional cast of musical theater professionals and a culminating performance into each hour-long episode just creates confusion. Meanwhile, Bell fans should know that her participation is pretty minimal.

The moments of emotional depth and humanity are rare — though sometimes quite touching — and the moments of cringing and overproduction are plentiful. ... It’s a forced setting in forced circumstances, and the show never shakes that sense of contrivance in the same the way that, for example, “Queer Eye” does.